‘But remember what we decided,’ she warned, ‘no telling anyone at work, not for a good while yet.’
‘It’s okay,’ he said, ‘I know the drill.’
As they entered the village and saw the pretty flint-stone cottages either side of them decorated with colourful hanging baskets and bunting – a long-standing fête tradition – Martha unexpectedly experienced a shot of adrenaline course through her. She was accustomed to feeling this at work – a fight or flight response – but this was a new phenomenon for her when arriving home at Anchor House.
She reasoned that it was because she didn’t really know what awaited her when they parked on the drive, and walked round to the back of the house to let themselves in. Before Dad died, she knew exactly what to expect; he’d greet her with one of his all-enveloping hugs and demand to know every scrap of her latest news.Meanwhile Mum would be chatting to Tom in a much quieter and more measured manner.
But now that didn’t happen. Now it was as if Anchor House no longer really felt like home. And Mum wasn’t Mum anymore. She was a stranger acting in a strange and totally unlike-Mum kind of way.
Martha had been grateful that Mum had never been one of those awful helicopter mothers who felt the need to control every aspect of her child’s life. She had been much more inclined to stand back and let Martha and Willow get on with things, and without feeling they had to be constantly in touch. ‘You must have your freedom,’ she had frequently encouraged them. ‘That’s how you learn to cope in life.’
But as unfair as it might sound, Martha couldn’t accept that Mum might feel the same way herself, that she now needed her own freedom to make her own mistakes and learn from them. Martha couldn’t bear the thought of her mother making a fool of herself over some man she thought she loved.
The sight of Rick’s BMW on the driveway – parked at an angle that made it awkward for Tom to park as neatly as he would have liked – caused Martha at once to feel less than positively towards him. And despite all her good intention, she was suddenly filled with the same sense of indignant outrage she’d experienced when Rick had taken her to task on the telephone.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
The weather, as everybody kept saying, could not be more perfect and the organisers of the Tilsham Village Fête could once again breathe a collective sigh of relief that the event wasn’t going to be ruined by a downpour.
As always, Naomi was in charge of the cake stall and as soon as the vicar had declared the fête open, a rush – a veritable stampede – descended upon the heavily laden trestle tables to snap up the best baked goods. The more determined and experienced had placed themselves close by to be sure of not missing out.
For the last hour, and with occasional help from Katie Murdoch and Linsey Bales, Naomi had been so busy serving customers there had been no time for her to worry about the task that lay ahead for her that weekend – that of finding the right moment to tell Martha and Willow about her plans to marry Ellis. Their arrival this morning at Anchor House had been taken up with them settling in and having a drink before coming here to help set everything out. But later, when the distraction of the fête was gone, she would have to break the news to them.
She was aware that many people would question the very idea of marriage; why not simply live together? It was certainly an option,but she genuinely liked the thought of being married to Ellis. She wanted to make that commitment to him, just as he did to her. As he said, it just felt so right, as though they should always have been together.
Ellis was sure that Martha would insist on Naomi having a pre-nup; in fact he had suggested it was something they should arrange themselves anyway, that they should pre-empt matters.
‘If we have everything buttoned down nice and tight,’ he’d said, ‘it will help to put Martha and Willow’s minds at rest that I’m marrying you for all the right reasons and not material gain.’
With the barbershop quartet belting out a medley of songs over by the ornamental fishpond, Naomi took a handful of hot sticky coins from a young girl in exchange for a paper plate of fairy cakes wrapped in clingfilm. When the girl had gone, Naomi scanned the surrounding stalls for any sign of Martha and Willow. The last she’d seen of them was when they’d met up with some old friends from the village who, like them, were down for the weekend. As a group, they had gone in search of a drink, probably a glass of Jennifer’s famously potent Pimm’s which she made herself. It didn’t matter how many times she was asked for the recipe, Jennifer refused to divulge the exact ingredients and quantities used. All anyone knew was that its strength was not to be underestimated.
When the barbershop quartet came to the end of their set, the tannoy system burst into life with a loud crackle and Ellis announced that there were now donkey rides available in the orchard and the tug of war to look forward to, followed by the Punch and Judy show, and the three-legged race, as well as plenty of raffle tickets on sale to buy.
‘Don’t miss this chance to win tickets for two for the Chichester Festival Theatre,’he urged the crowd, ‘or dinner for four at the Millstream Hotel in Bosham. There’s also a jeroboam of Champagne, and who wouldn’t want to win that?’
‘Ellis is a very good MC, isn’t he?’ said Willow, who had materialised out of nowhere and on her own. She was dressed in a diaphanous maxi-length dress the colour of clotted cream, and on her feet – her toenails sparkly with pink glittery nail varnish – were diamanté flip-flops. Over her shoulder was a faded denim bag decorated with an embroidered rainbow and threaded through her blonde plaits were daisies she’d picked from the lawn at Anchor House. She looked so young, almost childlike; Naomi was reminded of all the times she had brushed Willow’s hair for school in the morning.
‘He wasn’t at all sure about accepting the job when he was asked to do it,’ she said, suddenly nostalgic for those days when the girls had been children, ‘but as everyone in the village knows, nobody refuses a request from Jennifer.’
‘Did he know that Dad used to do it?’ Willow asked, after eating a strawberry from a small biodegradable tub in her hands – the vicar had insisted this year that they had to be as plastic-free as possible.
‘Yes,’ said Naomi. ‘I told him. Jennifer did as well. It seemed only fair.’ She kept to herself that Jennifer had joked about Ellis having an appealingly sexy come-to-bed-with-me voice that was guaranteed to seduce the punters into spending even more money than they usually did.
‘So things are still going okay between you and Ellis?’
Naomi felt her face blushing like a schoolgirl at her daughter’s question. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘More than okay. Is … is that a problem for you?’
‘No. Or at least I don’t think so. It does seem funny though, you being with a man who … who isn’t Dad. Does everyone in the village know about the two of you now?’
Naomi gave a hesitant smile. ‘I would imagine so.’
‘Well,’ Willow said with a sigh, ‘I suppose that makes it all the more real, doesn’t it?’
‘You sound like you would rather it wasn’t.’
‘Oh, ignore me,’ she said with a shrug, at the same time scooping up another strawberry and putting it in her mouth. ‘I’m all over the place at the moment. Although Martha would say no change there then.’
Naomi smiled. ‘You seem very much on the ball to me, darling. Where are the others?’
